Iran: Protest that refuses to die

It is fruitless to speculate whether a tipping point has been achieved by Iran's burgeoning opposition movement. But after the weekend's protest marches in which at least eight people and probably many more died, we do know that the movement is both exceptionally resilient and spreading. What started out as a loose-knit coalition of reformist groups led by defeated opposition candidates protesting rampant fraud in the presidential election is becoming bolder, more focused and angrier by the week. Many protesters on the streets of Tehran on Sunday did not even cover their faces in the videos uploaded to YouTube, as they did in the post-election protests six months ago. The crowds displayed great bravery, refusing to retreat under police baton charges and volleys of warning shots. The other feature of the internet clips was the scenes of policemen either being overwhelmed or giving up and walking away. The protest is also going national. Opposition websites reported clashes in Qom and seven other cities in central, northern and eastern Iran. None of this seems likely to melt away.

If the protesters are getting bolder, there is, however, little sense that the Revolutionary Guards, loyal to the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are losing their grip. Yesterday they arrested at least 10 leading opposition figures, three of them advisers to the opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi. The day before, they killed his nephew. According to one opposition website, Ali Habibi Mousavi was run over by a sports utility vehicle outside his home and then shot dead by its five occupants. Faced with a choice of trying to cut deals with the opposition and crushing it, hardline supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad know only one path – further repression. The next step would be to arrest Mir Hossein Mousavi and another opposition leader, Mehdi Karroubi. Iran's intelligence ministry said yesterday that members of an exiled opposition group, the Mujahideen Khalq Organisation, were among those arrested, and it is not hard to see where those arrests are leading. At least one cleric yesterday portrayed the clashes during the Ashura religious festival as the work of foreign governments.

Caught between trying not to appear as the opposition's backers and not abandoning them either, the US national security council spokesman Mike Hammer reminded the regime that it was fighting its own civilians seeking to exercise their universal rights, not the might of foreign powers. But the US is surely right not to do anything more at this stage than to issue statements. Thus far the Iranian regime is doing a good job of discrediting itself with its people. It does not need any assistance from abroad to do that. In the immediate aftermath of the rigged presidential election, Ayatollah Khamenei made a huge strategic mistake of supporting President Ahmadinejad and the bloody crackdown which ensued, shedding his role as the supreme arbiter and descending to the level of the government thugs on the street. Then we had the rape of detainees in prison, appalling acts for a regime proclaiming Islamic values. Six months on, the regime may now have undermined its claim to uphold Iran's religious traditions by using lethal force on a day meant to honour one of Shia Islam's holiest figure, Imam Hossein. The traditional lament "Ya Hossein" might now refer to Mir Hossein Mousavi instead. Killing a close relative of Mr Mousavi will do little to counter the opposition narrative that they have become the guardians of the Iranian Islamic revolution and are the true heirs to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

So far the regime has been able to control events using the Basij militiamen and the Revolutionary Guards, but there are 15 more national religious holidays to come, each one a focus for further protest. It is a question of who cracks first, and there are no indications of either side backing down.